Rosberg reigns supreme at Monza

Nico Rosberg capitalised on Lewis Hamilton’s poor start to take his first ever race win at the Northern Italian track of Monza.

Hamilton got severely bogged down at the start enabling five cars to pass him before turn one and he slid down the order into sixth. Hamilton was soon picking his way back up the field though as the British driver passed Daniel Ricciardo at the Curva Grande following a failed attempt at an overtake at the Rettifilo.

There was soon drama as Felipe Nasr’s Sauber was sent up into the air following a collision with Palmer on the exit of the first chicane. The Brazilian attempted to squeeze the Renault driver out which resulted in contact which threw Nasr’s car into some temporary air time and stripped Palmer of his front wing. Both drivers subsequently duly retired.

Hamilton then made up another position with the Mercedes car overwhelming the Williams of Valtteri Bottas on the start finish straight. Hamilton streamed past before the corner even arrived. The first round of pit stops for the two-stoppers arrived soon after with four of the front six opting to duck into the pitlane with the two Mercedes cars opting for the one stop strategy.

Once Hamilton and Rosberg took their sole pit-stops Hamilton resumed the race in fourth with Rosberg first. Hamilton was closer to the Ferraris than he was before the first round of pit stops and he took second when the Maranello team’s two drivers came in for a second and final stop. During this period full of pit stops Manor’s German prodigy Pascal Wehrlein quietly pulled to the side of the road from fourteenth place with the young driver encountering a technical fault.

The race continued in it’s uneventful fashion towards the end of the race with nothing overwhelmingly exciting occuring. Daniil Kvyat’s torrid season kept on producing more mishaps with the Russian being forced to retire with a mechanical issue. Lewis Hamilton wasn’t realistically going to finish anywhere other than second and him losing a second after being forced to skip part of the first chicane did nothing to change that. Jenson Button had an exciting battle with teammate Fernando Alonso with the former managing to dive up the inside of the Spaniard at turn one and hold off Alonso’s attempts to get back past him.

Two moves for point scoring positions occurred during the latter half of the race both of which involved Red Bulls on the offensive. The first of which was a masterful move from Daniel Ricciardo who despite being a fair bit back from Bottas lunged up the inside of the Finn at the Rettifilo and made it stick, all without any contact. This pass catapulted the Australian into fifth The second move involved Max Verstappen with the Dutch driver who has been under fire recently nearly made contact with Sergio Perez at the Roggia chicane. Verstappen made a late move on Perez and the Mexican failed to notice the Dutch driver making a move on him until the last moment causing him to miss the corner and take the escape road allowing Verstappen to take seventh place.

But the race belonged to Nico Rosberg with the German driving a sublime race to close the gap to Hamilton down to just two points. Second came Hamilton with Vettel giving the Tifosi something to cheer about by coming in third.